Coming soon to college football? Pass nine hours in fall or get suspended the next year

The NCAA Division I Board of Directors supports creating a rule that would require college football players to earn nine academic credits in the fall term to be eligible for all of the following season. The board said today it plans to introduce this NCAA legislation in August.

The recommendation was one of several from the Football Academic Working Group, which consists of presidents, athletics directors, commissioners, coaches and faculty athletic representatives. The group has been exploring ways to improve Academic Progress Rate scores in football, which are the second-lowest in Division I, behind men's basketball.

Under the proposal, players who fail to earn nine credits in the fall would miss four games the next season. There would be an opportunity to gain two of the games back if the player earns a total of 27 credit hours by the end of the following summer.

The NCAA says data shows that football players who accumulate nine credits in the fall are much more likely to be academically eligible at the end of the spring term. The change would put football players on track to graduate in four-and-a-half years instead of the traditional five-year path and could help reduce the number of players who leave school while ineligible after exhausting their eligibility, according to the NCAA.

The Football Academic Working Group has found APR problems in football tend to be due to eligibility rather than retention issues. Incoming freshmen in football have lower high school academic profiles than any other Division I sport besides men's basketball. Yet football's first-year college academic performance is worse than every sport, including basketball.

NCAA research found football players lose a significant number of APR eligibility points during their season, in the fall term. The NCAA says when a first-year football player loses an eligibility point in the fall, he is much more likely to lose additional eligibility or become an "0-for-2" player who also leaves the school. There is a similar trend for sophomores and juniors.

The Committee on Academic Performance indicated some concerns about how the nine-credit rule applies to schools on quarter terms and the impact it might have on third-year players who have a chance to turn pro early. The Board of Directors acknowledged those concerns and viewed them as details that can be worked out before there is a membership vote.

The Board of Directors also supports eliminating waivers of the APR contemporaneous penalty for Football Bowl Subdivision players who leave school early while academically ineligible. The thinking is eliminating the waivers will provide incentive for players and schools to better manage retention and eligibility issues. Contemporaneous penalties result in the loss of scholarships.

One recommendation from the working group that wasn't adopted is creating an APR portfolio for presidents. This summer, head coaches in several sports -- including football -- will have APR scores tied to their public record. The presidents have discussed APR numbers for other groups, including themselves, but they say the APR was designed to be a team-based metric and shouldn't be applied to an entire athletics department.